Birthday Blues: Remembering Brian!

Today is certain to be one of those days. You know, the kind of day when you’ve got something on your mind and it just keeps eating away at you. Seems no matter how hard you try, you just can’t shake it. Even trying to keep busy doesn’t help. This time around I actually have someone on my mind rather than something. Yeah for the past few days I can’t stop thinking about my buddy Brian, the person my website is dedicated to. He passed away nearly nine years ago on Thanksgiving Day. Today would have been his 65th birthday.

For the last several years of his life, August seemed to be a particularly difficult month for Brian. Call it the birthday blues if you will but Brian used to get extremely depressed and despondent around this time which led him to sometimes over medicate. He even ended being hospitalized in August of both 2007 and 08. I’m not sure what it was about his birthday month that brought him down, but it was bad and only got worse, especially after his mother passed away a few days before Christmas 2006. Unfortunately, it was Brian who discovered his mom, dead in her room. She’d been dead for a couple of days when he found her. It was a very traumatic experience for him. He was haunted by the event for the remainder of his life.

His untimely death still weighs heavy on me. Although it didn’t really surprise me. He was a recovering alcoholic for twenty plus years and had been to hell and back on more than a few occasion. I knew he was taking several prescriptions to deal with his ailments, both physical and mental, but I thought he’d be around awhile longer than he was. I thought we’d be friends well into old age. Just two crazy, old codgers. But it wasn’t to be. Bri was a fighter. No matter what kind of crap life threw his way or he happened to stumble into, he somehow found his way through and would be back on top of things eventually. It wasn’t always easy and sometimes it would take a while, but he always seemed to battle back, except the last time. Yeah, I really wish he were still around, I miss him. I wish we could just sit around and shoot the shit like we did in the old days. I miss his wry sense of humor. No one I know has a sense of humor quite like his. My cousin Dave came close, but he’s gone too. Two of my closest, wild and crazy friends, gone too soon.

Nearly nine years and I still miss him so much. He was a good friend. We understood each other, always did. I really wish we could have gone cruising in my 64 El Camino listening to “Billy The Mountain” or “Ruben and the Jets” at least one more time before he passed. We actually talked about it by phone a month or so before his death, but it never happened. I should have made it happen. I just thought we had more time. I thought wrong. I really wish he were still around so we could be getting together for some birthday laughs. That would’ve been cool.

“I’ll be thinking about you all day Bri. you’ll be with me in spirit. “Happy Birthday Bro. Pop in anytime, you’re always welcome.” Love you man…